Cowboy Bebop Homage
by Certainly-Not-A-Writer
Summary: Should it be called 'Cowboy Bebop Adaptation? Maybe 'Puella Magica Bebop? Or better yet, 'Cowboy Bebop Plagiarism', eh? Ha-ha. It's an adaptation of the Cowboy Bebop anime's first episode, with all the roles replaced with PMMM characters. Written primarily for practicing how to write action scenes.
1. Part I

**Author's Notes:** Read this fic if...

A. You've watched CB's first episode, at least.

-or-

B. You're just looking for another fanfic to read.

The story's stable enough to support both kinds of readers, so there shouldn't be a problem. I've tried to keep it as faithful to the original as possible, but of course some people will notice there are some differences here and there for the plot's sake and the characters I'm working with. Thematically, it's different from everything I've written so far, so I hope I didn't screw something up somehow. I dunno why I wrote it; I just love how Shinichiro Watanabe makes stories. That, and a change of pace, I suppose. Like I said in the description, the fic was written to practice action scenes, so please check if I did good there too. And this is only an adaptation for CB episode one, so this fic only has two parts, and this first part has 8k words. The second part comes in 3 days, after some finishing edits. I know it's a lot to swallow, but it was needed to keep the plot together. I really hope you guys enjoy, though.

 _Okay, I think it's time we blow this scene. Get everybody and the stuff together... Okay, 3, 2, 1, LET'S JAM!_  
**pretends that he's hearing _'Tank!'_ play off in his head…**

* * *

 _It is raining. The clouds are grey, overcast above the city. Sorrowful beings that weep for the earth with their unrequited tears. A church casts an ominous black silhouette over a lone girl. Water flows down its stained glass walls, muddling its once-bright colors with dirty hues of brown. She walks to the building's grand doors with nothing but her long red hair tied in a drenched ponytail, her dress clinging to her skin, drops of water falling from the tip of an ornate spear in her right hand._

 _Within the church, the interior is vastly different from what it is on the outside—a grand theater where rows upon rows of audience chairs go up as far as the sky. An orchestra plays a beautiful progression of Bethoven's Symphony no. 8, their azure silhouettes handling their instruments in perfect synchronization. A maestro leads the show, the genius strokes of his baton leading the group through the motions of this mad fortissimo._

 _Behind them a larger, more impressive being emerges from the darkness: a giant mermaid wearing a bizarre coat of armor. A heart-shaped collar attached to a billowing blue cape is tied with a red ribbon to its neck. Its head, skull-like and disturbing, has a bunch of swords jammed into its top as if to create some sort of regal crown. On its right hand a huge cutlass stands aloft, which it sends crashing down towards the girl. She only has a few moments to dodge it, and the monster crushes the carpeted floor she stands on instead. Having missed its prey, the mermaid sends projectiles—wheels—flying after her._

 _They come from all directions, hitting the girl with impunity. Some of her bones are shattered, but she still stands. She chooses to hold her ground, purposely absorbing the mermaid's attacks. Like how a man patiently grimaces at the frenzied strikes of his lover._

 _She bleeds from the side of her head, but despite this she smiles. She knows what the mermaid is doing, and she smiles. The girl undoes the ribbon that holds her hair, releasing a golden pin into her palms. She gets on her knees and clasps her hands, praying to someone unknown, maybe to whatever god she believed in, provided that she still believed in God._

 _The mermaid raises its cutlass again, preparing for a final strike._

 _Seeing this, the girl ends her vigil and says something to the mermaid. It seems heartfelt, the real feelings within the depths of her soul._

 _Never such beautiful words have been said, but we will never hear them, for these are events of a past life._

 _She kisses the red gem on the pin, and throws it to the air. It breaks. The whole place fills with a white, blinding light._

 _Unfortunately, we do not know what happens next._

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

To be an effective swordswoman, the wielder must be one with her weapon. It is an extension of her body, an extra limb where energy must flow in order to make a powerful strike. The grip must be firm, the pose right, the feet stable enough to channel both delivered and received energy to and from the ground. Like a current, this energy must flow freely from the legs, up to the waist, to the chest, to the arms and, finally, to the sword itself…

In a small room stood a swordswoman. Before her, a life-sized straw puppet in the darkness. She planted her feet on the ground, the right foot in front of her left foot as in the prescribed order. In her hands was her weapon, a wooden practice sword.

Just outside her room, the swordswoman's roommate was boiling water in an electronic kettle.

The swordswoman channeled her energy into her forearm, and then let it flow into the weapon's span. She could feel it in the tips of her extremities, slowly taking hold of the sword, waiting for the chance to be released in its full potential.

Her straw adversary stood confidently before her bamboo blade, seemingly unaware of the danger she posed.

On the other hand, her roommate, who was boiling water earlier, had now prepared it as a pot of green tea.

Back to the swordswoman. Without giving the straw man a chance to realize her intent, she raised her weapon and struck a violent blow to the puppet's head.

" _Men!"_ ("Head!")

A flash of a second later, she drew her sword back, before smashing it into the puppet's waist.

" _Dou!"_ ("Waist!")

And with a sleight of hand, she held the blade upwards, and then brought it down onto her enemy's wrist in a final, disarming strike.

" _Ko-te!"_ ("Wrist!")

Her adversary was still standing, despite her efforts. But the damage was obvious—the straw had broken in many places, and some of the strings holding them together started to tear. But she did not give him a break. She struck again and again in the same order, hitting the same places as she yelled for her targets, the momentum of her strikes increasing with each blow like the waves of the ocean crashing against a rock cliff.

And while this is all happening, our friend in the kitchen pulled out a box of leftover rice from the fridge.

With every strike came more toil for the swordswoman's muscles. Her arms and wrists became sore from bearing her power's intense load. But pain was only in the mind. It did not exist, and it went away as quickly as it came, leaving the swordswoman more power to alter reality with her blade.

" _Men! Dou! KO-TE!"_

A final slash cut her enemy's waist in half, turning it into a mess of straw on the ground. Confident that her enemy will not rise up again, she lowered her sword and took quick, measured breaths, beads of sweat forming on her forehead.

She walked to where a small gem glowed on top of a study desk. Its blue aura shined as she held it close to the remains of her sparring partner. Both halves lit up, and they formed one whole straw man again.

 _Another round?_ She could use the extra exercise.

Unexpectedly, someone knocked on the door, and before she could even ask who it was, it opened, light flooding into the room so suddenly that her eyes hurt. She squinted to make out the vague silhouette amidst the brightness. It was Kyoko, her red hair undone, a bare shoulder peeking out of a white _Red Hot Chili Peppers_ T-Shirt that went down to her knees.

"Hey Sayaka, breakfast is ready," she said, stifling a yawn.

Sayaka wiped her forehead with a towel on her shoulder, and smiled at her. "I was just about done. What's cooking?"

"Oh, something special," her friend answered.

The living room in their hotel suite was small, just a coffee table in front of a TV and a kitchenette. On the table was a picture of a crowd of people in a nondescript place, probably a city. A red marker had circled out a girl with long black hair, the word 'Akemi' scribbled above her head. The face on the picture was too grainy though. Millions of girls in Japan could look like that.

"Sorry if I couldn't get a better picture," Kyoko started. "She just has long black hair. It goes like, down to her waist. You won't miss it…"

Sayaka contemplated her bowl of breakfast with the air of a food critic. "Hey, Kyoko…"

"She's that super-speedy girl who's been killing witches left and right."

"About this, um… special breakfast of ours…"

"You should probably remember her…" Kyoko grimaced, noticing that she may have been straining her partner's attention. "Hey, are you listening?"

"Why do we have _ochazuke_ for breakfast _?"_ Sayaka spooned herself some of the rice, eyeing how it dripped back into the broth of the bowl amidst the flakes of bonito and seaweed. "Is thiswhat you call ' _something special'_?"

"Yes, this is what I call something special."

"It's not special. It's… _ochazuke._ "

"It's special because we actually get to eat," Kyoko exclaimed with some pride. "There was still a ton of rice from the bento we shared last night, and with the spare change in my shorts I was able to buy some ochazuke strips and a green tea packet."

Sayaka stared at the bowl with darkened eyes, obviously depressed. "In short, we're broke."

"That's easy; we'll just beat someone up for money later, and everything should be fine. We don't have any food right now, so we'll have to make do with what we have."

The blunette closed her eyes, sipped some air through a hole she made between her lips. "You know… there were three cheeseburgers in the bag yesterday."

When Kyoko heard this, her veins ran ice.

"The day before that," she continued, "there was a week's supply of noodles."

The redhead gulped.

"And the day before _that_ , if I remember correctly, we should still have five days' worth of bread too. If we put all of that together, we shouldn't have any food problems until next week…"

Kyoko rubbed the back of her neck as she veered her eyes away. "Gee, that's kind of weird, huh? If we had that much then we shouldn't have—"

Sayaka pointed at her. "You ate all the food!"

For a few moments, silence hung in the air between them. Kyoko always had a problem when it came to binge eating, but food was easy enough to get anyway. As quickly as the issue rose, they realized that it wasn't that much of a big deal and Sayaka forgave her. Kyoko then promised to replace the food stocks, and continued.

The redhead cleared her throat. "Anyway, as I was saying earlier… Where was I? Oh yeah. Ehem, four days ago Homura Akemi's been reported to steal a huge bunch of Grief Seeds from some magical girl group. They say she managed to off some of them, and now she's hiding out here in Asunaro with her girl. Y'know, that dippy, pink-haired girl you were always with?"

Sayaka looked into her bowl, and her own reflection rippled in the green soup. She tried snatching an image out of her mind, but… nothing came out.

She shook her head. "Sorry, I can't recall."

"Oh, right, your memories." Kyoko checked herself. Maybe she had said something bad. As if for reconciliation, she asked, "How are they?"

She shrugged. "Still the same."

The redhead nodded. "I see… Anyway, she rolls with Akemi, and ever since Akemi's killed that huge Dreadnaught whatever all by herself, there's been a shortage on Grief Seeds. That's why everybody's gunning for the ones she's lugging."

Sayaka downed her bowl of _ochazuke_ and stretched her arms. "And I guess they'll be in better hands with us, is that right?"

Kyoko grinned. "Hah, who else?"

"When are they leaving?"

"Word on the street is that they're leaving today. Nobody knows whether they've already gone or not, though. It's still early. I think we can catch them."

 _A pink-haired girl,_ Sayaka wondered. _Have I ever met someone like that?_ Sayaka's memory went as far only a few weeks back, and even those memories were spotty at times. Was she some sort of friend? Someone Sayaka was close to, probably? She tried to make up any sort of mental image, but it was as if she was trying to see something at the bottom of a deep well. Even if something was there, the darkness already ate it away. Whoever that girl was, Sayaka had forgotten all about her.

Kyoko tapped her on the shoulder, asking if Sayaka was still going to eat her food. The blunette let her have it.

After breakfast, Kyoko took a hot shower, and Sayaka donned a yellow shirt and jeans. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were playing on the room's music player, the opening guitar to _Can't Stop_ snapping on the background. Obviously it was Kyoko's choice; Sayaka would have preferred something mellower, but she forgot every other band she would have known. As long as her memory was concerned, the Red Hot Chili Peppers was the only band in existence.

" _Where are you going?"_ Kyoko asked from behind the bathroom door.

"Paying Kyubey a visit."

" _You sure you can trust that bastard?"_

"You know that Kyubey's got a beat on every magical girl; he's bound to know where this Akemi girl is."

" _I still have a bad feeling about that, though."_

"And where will you go?"

" _I heard that Akemi's been spotted in this neighborhood somewhere, so I'll go scouting around. I can drive you to Kyubey first if you want, though."_

"And watch you steal a car again?" Sayaka shook her head. "Nah, I can handle him. He does something funny, I'll cut his head off."

" _Yeah, cut his head and the heads of the next twenty with him."_

"I can take care of myself, thank you very much."

" _If anything happens to you, I'll be all kinds of pissed. So you better make sure of that, got it?"_

"Got it."

" _You have your phone with you?"_

She took out the small phone Kyoko stole for her the other day. "Uh-huh."

" _Call me if you find anything out. And make sure you charge the battery on that thing!"_

Last time she checked the cellphone, it still had a little juice in it. It should last her for a little bit. "Yes, mom!"

As she heard Sayaka leave the room, Kyoko looked up at the showerhead, letting the water fall onto her body, cleanse her like rain. She was still tense, couldn't calm down. She had no idea how Sayaka was actually doing. Her memories hadn't come back yet, but at least she knew that her name was Sayaka. But really, meet up with _Kyubey_ of all things? Crap, maybe Kyoko should have gone with her…

The redhead shook her head. If Sayaka said she could take care of herself, Kyoko should better take her word for it. She could, right?

As the steam wafted in the bathroom, the Chili Peppers were still singing, telling her that if she wanted any answers, she'd better come back strong with fifty belly dancers.

If you listened to their lyrics closely, Kyoko realized that they could sound pretty ridiculous at times. "Such an easygoing song," she mused.

Such an easygoing girl, she would have connected with that. But the shower water suddenly became cold.

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

Early morning in the city of Asunaro. At a _Denny's_ restaurant somewhere near the commercial district, a couple was seated at the back next to the window. A girl with long black hair calmly sipped a cup of coffee, her elegant fingers touching the mug handle as if it would break at the slightest touch. Her cool, amethyst eyes watched the street outside: Almost empty, with a few old people doing their morning shopping, some students riding a bus, some dandy styling himself on the side mirror of a red Ford Mustang, all of them minding their own lives.

Such a quiet scene. A little too quiet for her tastes, but mornings like this for her were rare nowadays. Better enjoy the moment now while it was still here.

Across the table from her, another girl sat in front of a half-eaten plate of blueberry pancakes. She had pink hair that went down to her shoulders, a slight smile on her face, obviously enjoying the scene outside as well.

A khaki messenger bag sat between them on the table, a sketchpad with a half-drawn scene of a city sunrise, along with a couple of Japan Railways stored value cards stuffed between the pages.

"Kind of reminds you of Mitakihara huh, Homura?" the pinkette asked.

"Yes, kind of." She took another sip of her coffee. Bitter, but not too much. Just right. "It was this quiet in the mornings there too."

The girl with pink hair smiled at her for what she said, and then took another bite out of her food.

Homura watched her eat breakfast slowly, delicately. It was very ladylike, and Homura loved her friend's quality of eating like that. As much as silent mornings, she enjoyed watching this too. "Those pancakes… Are they good, Madoka?"

Madoka nodded. "Uh-huh."

"Looks like I ordered the right kind then."

"Yup. You know, papa always used to make them like this on Sundays."

"Yes, you did mention that he was a good cook."

"That's why I'm excited to see him again after all this time." Whenever she started to talk about her family, Madoka always seemed to brighten up. That was why that particular morning was so special to her. "Once we get on that train, we'll be back in Mitakihara again."

"Yes… Back in Mitakihara."

"I wish we could be there with everybody, though."

Homura knew what she was talking about. At this time, they had known many people, and through their journey, most of them had perished. Madoka was always sentimental about them. Homura understood exactly why: Madoka was all alone in the world, without anything else except the hope that the Kaname family was still alive.

Homura held her hand.

"But you have me. Right, Madoka?" she asked.

After a few moments, Madoka put her own hand on top of it.

"Of course, Homura." She smiled. "Of course."

They had already reserved seats for the 8:00 train, second from the earliest. And once they got back home, Madoka would be able to see her family for the first time in weeks. This was good, Homura told herself. Whatever Madoka wanted, as long as it made her happy, she would make it come true.

But for some reason, the time-stopper felt uneasy. She kept tapping her foot under the table, edgy. She knew that this peaceful scene was not going to last for long. Something bad was going to happen, maybe at that very moment.

She watched Madoka's eyes observe the outside, and then slowly shift to Homura, and then at restaurant's interior. Homura saw how the calm slowly disappeared from her partner's eyes, replaced by a streak of anxiety.

Madoka tugged her hand. "Homura."

She immediately understood what was going on. Homura heard footsteps from behind her shoulder, which stopped to her right. Somebody called her name.

"Homura Akemi," the voice called, a girl. "We came for a little talk."

The apprehension within Madoka's eyes said it all; this girl was definitely one of the Pleiades Saints.

Homura muttered something in her breath, but the girl failed to hear her, begged her pardon. The time-stopper then turned her head to see a girl with brown, poofed-up hair. She wore a white dress and a polite smile on her face, the smile of all the teachers you've had in preschool. Fake, artificial, the type Homura exactly hated. Next to her was a depressing-looking girl with blonde hair tied in two braids, wearing a hoodie and short shorts. In her eyes, it was obvious that she couldn't care less about everything outside of the little world in her head.

Homura intended to give them some mercy for Madoka's sake, but a moment's deliberation made her figure that she didn't like the both of them at all.

"What did you say?" the girl with the poofed brown hair asked.

"…Keep those eyes wide open," Homura repeated.

She raised an eyebrow. "Huh…?"

Suddenly, Akemi disappeared from her chair. No trace of her remained, not even the girl she was with or the messenger bag they carried. It was as if the whole scene was shot on film, where one strip featured Homura at the table, and on the next strip she's gone, abruptly edited out of the picture.

Satomi was shocked. Nobody told her that Akemi could do that. Saki told her that they were after a powerful Puella Magi, but could magical girls disappear just like _that_? "Nico, where did Akemi go?" she asked the blonde.

Nico was about to shrug. "Beats me—"

Suddenly, a hole appeared in the middle of Satomi's forehead. A clean, bloodless chasm that caused her eyes to widen and the colors inside them to disappear. She crumpled to the ground to reveal Akemi standing directly behind her, a smoking Colt Anaconda Revolver in her hand, and the broken remains of a Soul Gem at her foot.

Nico gasped, but she only let it on for a moment before resuming her stoic expression. She knew that her enemy was no fool; Satomi was. This Akemi girl was not going to be an easy one to beat.

Out of nowhere, four people appeared behind the blonde. Four completely identical copies of her, all of them with the same stoic faces and short shorts, but different kinds of firearms in each one's hand. Without warning, they opened fire, riddling the restaurant full of bullets. The glass windows shattered, the wooden tables got smashed, and all the innocent bystanders ran off for their lives. But Homura disappeared again, popping up behind tables and chairs that in turn got loaded with 7.62 caliber bullets and iron buckshot. One Nico caught a bullet in the stomach, then as she keeled over in pain, she caught another one between her eyes. Homura appeared right in front of another Nico, blowing out her brains with the shotgun she instantly stole from her.

Her enemies whittled down to three, Homura took the two down by diving through the air, shooting both girls with her pistols. Landing unscathed, she managed to end up at the business end of the final Nico's _Tokarev_ Pistol. With no hesitation the blonde pulled the trigger, and the steel round exploded out of the breech, slicing the air in subsonic speed, arriving only a mere 3 centimeters short of Akemi's forehead…

But some unknown twist of fate caused her to disappear again, and she re-appeared exactly in front of Nico's face, the _Tokarev_ now jammed on the blonde's Soul Gem put between her golden eyes.

"I told you two to keep those eyes open," Akemi said, cold. Death personified.

That intense blue stare was the scariest thing Nico had seen in her life. The final thing she saw in her life.

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

" _She is… still here in Asunaro,"_ Kyubey told her through telepathy. _"That's for certain."_

Sayaka brushed some imaginary dust off her shoulder, focused on it too much, pretending not to notice the loathsome creature before her.

" _It's quite strange to see you here, Sayaka Miki,"_ it continued. _"I'm amazed at how you were able to achieve such a feat."_

"I don't need your flattery," she replied coldly, refreshing herself with a can of _Dr. Pepper_. "I just need to know where Akemi is."

" _I apologize; I am afraid that this is only as much as I know."_

They were both on the top of a building in Asunaro's financial district, an office rooftop where the wind blew a cool breeze. In the distance, half the sun had already appeared in the horizon, the red ball of light outgrowing the tall skyscrapers. It turned out that looking for the little rodent was a lot easier than Sayaka thought. She simply had to call Kyubey in her mind, and they agreed to see each other at this place.

"I don't believe you," she said. "Do I have to be _specific_ about it before you tell me?"

She was still annoyed at seeing this little white devil, this trickster that caused her to make that contract. She hated everything about him; those red eyes, that fake smile, the twisted deception and that sagacity for ice-cold observations. The type of creature she would never get along with no matter what happened. To think it managed to fool her into believing that it was her friend…

" _No Sayaka, I am honest about this now. I really am,"_ it said, seemingly raising an air of empathy to soothe her anger. _"I do not know Homura Akemi's exact whereabouts, but I do know that she's here. That should be enough to work with."_

"At least tell me what she looks like!"

" _So my hypothesis was correct after all. You've forgotten some of your memories, haven't you?"_

The blunette shut up.

" _No surprise in that, I suppose. The process of becoming a witch split your soul apart. Being put back together so hastily like that, some parts are bound to go missing. To be honest, I am actually a lot more interested in how you have managed to be here, talking to me," it said. "Really, the magical girl system is full of surprises that even_ my _race does not understand."_

"Well here's your surprise," she said, walking away. "I'm going now; don't follow me."

But suddenly, another Kyubey appeared on the air-conditioning unit next to her, making Sayaka gasp.

" _But as with all surprises, there must be some sort of cause._ _If you don't mind, Sayaka Miki, would you let us study this anomaly? It could lead to help us create renewable energy sources."_

What did he mean by… 'renewable energy sources'?

" _If a Witch can turn back into a Magical Girl, and she turns into a Witch again, would that create double the amount of energy in the resulting Grief Seed?"_

"You make me sick." Sayaka turned her back on it. "I have no time for your nonsense."

" _You already know how it is, Sayaka Miki. Falling back into despair someday is inevitable. It may not be today, it may not be twenty days or twenty years from now, but someday you will finally fall into despair. And then… death."_

The blunette closed her eyes. How many times has she thought of that word? "Again, huh?"

The creature cocked his head to one side. _"What was that?"_

"I've already died once, Kyubey. For a boy," she said, before continuing to go her way.

" _You take despair too lightly, Sayaka Miki."_

"I'm not afraid of it anymore." She glanced back, barely seeing Kyubey's white silhouette in the corner of her eye. "I'm not afraid of you, either."

" _Then those beings you humans believe in… Gods, I think they are. I hope they bless you on your journey. You will need all of the blessings you can get."_

"Hah!" She scoffed. What a joke.

 _"If you ever feel like finally dying for the sake of the universe, call me,"_ it said. _"I'll be waiting."_

Something in what Kyubey said made her stop. She turned back, wanting to give him a piece of her mind. But the creature was already gone.

Well, so much for that. Wonder what Kyoko turned up in her search. Sayaka was about to dial her number when for some reason the screen on her phone was black. What, did it break? She pressed the power button a few times, but nothing happened.

She remembered something.

 _Charge the battery on that thing!_

Riiight…

"Sonofabitch," she muttered. Sayaka then slapped a palm on her forehead. "Dammit Sayaka; what an idiot…!"

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

When Kyoko heard that there was a _Denny's_ in the neighborhood, she figured that she could steal a few burgers for lunch with Sayaka. Decked out in her usual hoodie and short shorts, she hopped to the restaurant with the intention of declaring a robbery. Walking through the front door though, she did not know that she would come seeing _this_.

The restaurant was everything short of destroyed. The counters were a mess of wood chips and splinters, tables and chairs were wrecked beyond repair, and bullet holes scattered the once-white plaster walls. The place was devoid of any life. It smelled like something was burning in the kitchen.

An art deco picture of a diner had its frame cracked on the floor. It sat in a puddle of blood belonging to a girl with blonde hair, the upper part of her face rendered a Picasso painting by whatever blew her forehead apart. Somewhere a little farther away from her, another girl was also crumpled on the floor. She had poofed-up brown hair, and half of her white summer dress was dyed carnation pink. The signs of their battle made their occupations obvious; no way could ordinary girls lug so many guns, cause so much damage.

Kyoko raised a brow. Cat fight, huh?

Usually, she would have concluded that they were just two girls who happened to fight over a Grief Seed. She could imagine it already. Girl A was having pancakes when Girl B comes in, saying, _'iz wants ur grif sid.'_ Girl A glares at her and says, _'no, meguca no give you grif sid.'_ So Girl B takes out a gun and says, _'then iz shoots ur sool jim,'_ but apparently Girl A also has a gun and shouts, _'then meguca shoots ur sool jim back!'_ They shoot each other, destroy the place, and while they're dying on the floor, Girl A sees her own failure and mutters, _'no sool jim… being meguca is suffering,_ ' and dies. The end.

Kyoko shook her head. The fuck was that all about?

There so many things wrong with this scene. If only two people were here, the amount of bullets expended did not match how many guns they could shoot at each other. The ways the bullets went around the place seemed as if they were all focused on one target. Also, how both girls died also had some things to say. The blonde looked as if she was shot point blank in the face, but her friend would have had to come up close and personal to do that. The girl with the dress and poofy hair was face-down, and it was obvious that she was shot in the back of her head. But considering that she shot first and managed to fire point blank into Blondey, how could Blondey shoot back and accurately hit the back of Poof-san's head? If Blondey shot first, how could have Poof-san fired into her face, then?

It would have been easier to say that Girl A or Girl B had some sort of backup against the other and those guys had already run off some time ago. Either that, or Girl A and Girl B were on the same side and they were fighting something totally different: Girl C, maybe.

But…

After a few moments of deep thinking, Kyoko shook her head. Too many hypotheticals to consider. All she had was a ruined _Denny's,_ a crapload of bullet casings, two girls dead on the floor, and lots of questions.

Kyoko sighed. She was never really cut out for this detective shtick.

Then again, if she tried to think of anybody in Asunaro who usually used guns to do business, and if she thought of the scenario where Girl A and Girl B were on the same side, then unless they had a bone to pick with the local Yakuza then all evidence would point to just one person.

 _Homura Akemi._

Kyoko made a long, shooting whistle. "Well… shit."

She knew that Akemi was a walking disaster area, but _damn_.

As if on a totally unrelated note, Kyoko noticed something strange about the place. Apparently, there were some dolls on the floor, all looking like miniature versions of Blondey, but with their heads blown off.

Her face twisted at the non sequitir. What were those, Blondey's puppets or something? Well, that could explain why there was so much redecoration done. They must have had guns too. Still, seeing them in a scene like this all bloody and stuff... The thought made Kyoko shudder. Creepy as fuck.

Suddenly, she heard something from the outside. Footsteps. Judging by the voices, there were two of them. Very quickly she vaulted over the counter and hid herself underneath, daring not to make a single sound.

Kyoko felt utterly miserable. She came here for burgers, and now she had to deal with _this_. Her stomach felt like the rolling insides of a 5.6-magnitude earthquake. She could eat a cartful of _taiyaki_ if God was nice enough to let her steal it. Under the counter there were nothing but glass plates. Glass plates, but no food on them. What a depressing sight.

The footsteps came closer, and she heard the door creak open. They walked in, careful of whatever that could be still waiting for them. They didn't speak a word, no gasps, no yelps, no nothing. They definitely didn't just happen to come across this scene.

Kyoko was tempted to peek over the counter to see what was going on. She might find out whether all of this had something to do with Akemi.

A girl with blue hair and glasses knelt down next to the blonde's corpse. Next to her stood a small girl with long white hair, thick and cloud-like. They didn't look much, but in her years of magical girl experience Kyoko knew that it was the easy-looking ones you had to watch out for.

The white haired girl Kyoko labeled in her brain as 'Cloud-tan' stared for a few moments at Blondey before averting her eyes with a grimace. "She got Nico," she commented coldly, belying her cute façade.

"And Satomi too," said Glasses as she looked at Poof-san, obviously disturbed.

So Blondey's name was Nico, and Poof-san's name was Satomi? Well thanks a lot, Glasses and Cloud-tan. Now Kyoko had two more names to stick on dead faces whenever she closed her eyes.

"Do you think Akemi did this?" Cloud-tan asked.

"Positive," Glasses said. "And we'll make sure she will pay… But with all those Grief Seeds she's packing, it'll be tough to beat her."

"I don't care. She hurt Saki, she destroyed my museum," she muttered with tones of rage. "I won't stop until I get to crush Akemi." That last one, a tone of… pleasure? From what, the act of crushing Akemi, maybe?

They must be the magical girl group Akemi stole Grief Seeds from. Kyoko was on the right track. Wherever these girls would go, she was bound to find Akemi.

But there was something in Cloud-tan's voice that made it obvious to the redhead. She could be dealing with a group of murderous psychopaths here.

Heh, as if Kyoko wasn't any better herself…

"We'd better get back to the others and tell them what happened," Glasses said. "They have to know about this."

Cloud-tan nodded, and was about to follow Glasses when somebody tapped her shoulder from behind. She glanced to see who it was. "Huh…?"

Kyoko smashed a plate into her face, knocking her out cold.

As the fragments clattered on the floor, Glasses was about to turn around when Kyoko wrapped her arm around her neck, pointing the tip of a spear to the girl's mouth. The redhead pulled her blue head close to the chest, the vice-like grip almost impossible to escape from. Glasses panicked and tried to pull out in vain, but her frail body could only do so much.

"Can you give me the specifics?" Kyoko asked.

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

Fifteen minutes later, two figures watched a _Denny's_ explode in a sudden plume of flame. The fire's tongues licked the outside of its melting windows as a red Ford Mustang rolled away from the scene, heading east.

" _It's nice that we're not in there,"_ a girl said.

" _Good thinking on that plan of yours,"_ another girl said.

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

In a toilet cubicle she couldn't remember where, Homura was curled over like a pocketknife, hugging her knees on the tile floor. Her teeth shook; she was shivering. It was as if she was freezing outside in the harshest winter on record, despite the fact that it was almost 32 degrees Celsius.

The walls melted before her, coalescing, mixing into shapes akin to brushstrokes on an impressionist painting. A mass of bright colors exploded, causing silhouettes of buildings to rise, huge skyscrapers that dazzled the night's sky with the bright yellow lights of their windows.

Standing above her were silhouettes of what seemed to be people, but they were not people. People didn't have bleach-white skin. Nor did they have colored spheres for eyes. And people never had smiles that stretched from one ear to another. Their mouths opened and closed like dolls, and from their voices came singing. Homura wanted to make them stop, but they wouldn't. They didn't care; they only wanted to see her shiver on the floor, suffering, probably die.

 _There is no escape,_ said the phantoms in her eyes. _No escape at all…_

One of the dolls threw a tomato at Homura, and the others followed suit, throwing tomato after tomato, the pulp and guts rendering her a bloody mess as they laughed at her with their shrill, maniacal voices. Slowly, Homura opened her juice-stung eyes and started crawling towards a khaki messenger bag three feet away.

The crawling felt like forever.

Finally, she was able to reach it, and a lone Grief Seed spilled out. She quickly snatched it and held it close to her Soul Gem, by now a torrent of blacks and violets swirling in a vortex of despair. The Seed immediately devoured all the darkness it could, but there was still much of the black left. Homura grabbed the bag and took out another Grief Seed. And then another, and another, and another. When her Soul Gem had become bright again, she found herself back in the ladies' bathroom, sitting on the tile floor. At her feet were 8 Grief Seeds, completely blackened to their cores.

She put a hand into the bag. There was only a handful left.

 _No…_

Homura felt alright. The silhouettes had all faded from her eyes. But she became anxious. At this rate, she wouldn't last a day or two. Without more Seeds, she would eventually turn sooner or later. Breaking into that museum… it was beginning to become more trouble than it was worth.

And to think of what she had to do to get these Grief Seeds. All those girls...

But she had to do it. If she didn't, Homura would end up leaving Madoka alone. She had to get Madoka back to Mitakihara. The Seeds should last that long, at least.

Homura stood up and went out of the cubicle. Still a little weak, she ambled her way to the sink. She plugged the drain and opened the faucet, letting water gather inside, using it to wash her face. She felt a little refreshed, but it did nothing to take her mind off the uncertainty of what would come in the hours ahead.

She leaned her arms on the sink and put her hands over her face. What did she get herself into? What did she get Madoka into? Madoka was going to get hurt. She was going to be left alone, and it was all her fault. She had already beaten Walpurgisnacht, so wasn't everything supposed to get fixed? Nothing got fixed at all! Nothing…

"It just became worse," came out along with her quiet sobs. "It just became worse…!"

She couldn't stop herself. Deep inside, she was still the same old Homura. The sadsack. The whiner. The helpless crybaby who couldn't do anything right. She just had to save Madoka, but she couldn't do even _that_ right!

Homura took her hands off her face and gazed hard at the mirror above the sink. Amidst the splotches of rust and soap scum on its edges, there were tired blue eyes, wrinkles forming underneath them, staggered to near exhaustion, resigned. _This is not my face,_ she concluded. _I did not look like this!_ The reflection belonged to another person, some other Homura who existed beyond the thin glass in some parallel universe. A failure who was solely responsible for making Madoka's life a living hell. It had to be! It had to be…

Otherwise, she might just kill herself.

On the mirror, Homura saw one of the cubicles open. Apparently, another girl was in there. Homura was about to avert her gaze out of embarrassment, partly to hide her face in case it was a Puella Magi. But for some reason, that girl looked oddly familiar. She had short, blue hair that matched her round eyes. Very quickly, the recognition made Homura gasp.

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

After Sayaka relieved herself, she finally felt refreshed for the first time that day. While she was washing her hands though, some girl kept staring at her as if the blunette had something on her face. She didn't even notice that her own sink was overflowing because it was clogged, and Sayaka told her just that. But even when she left the bathroom, Sayaka could still feel that girl's gaze on her back, like a heavy arm on your shoulders that wouldn't let go.

Weird.

The bathroom was in a _Lawson's_ near the office she met Kyubey at. It was one of those convenience stores that sold instant bentos and _Pokemon-_ shaped popsicles. Luckily enough, it also had one of those charging stations. They were kiosks where you could plug your phone on and drop 100 yen coins to charge the battery. Good thing Sayaka still had pocket change. She had another bottle of Dr. Pepper, too. Sayaka forgot a lot of things, but she was certain that she wasn't that much into drinking Dr. Pepper at all. Was drinking the soda some sort of side-effect of turning back from a Witch?

She shrugged. Who knows, maybe she just realized how refreshing it actually tasted.

Waiting for her phone to finish charging up, Sayaka whistled _Can't Stop_ to pass the time _._ She knew that she was a good whistler, and she definitely had the tune right. But can't she whistle _something else?_ Sayaka tried to think of other tunes: _Californication, Under the Bridge, Snow (Hey Oh),_ but nothing else that didn't have Red Hot Chili Peppers slapped all over it. Seriously, she should listen to other bands sometime…

While she got to the first chorus of _Snow_ though, the sound of something falling behind her cut it off.

Sayaka turned around, and she saw a paper bag of random groceries and things spilled out on the floor. Instinctively, she got on the ground and picked them up.

"Gee, miss, you should be a lot more careful where you drop these," she said. "Something might break."

Handing them over, Sayaka looked up and saw the girl who dropped them. She had pink hair that went down to her shoulders, but her pretty face had a blank stare. Completely blank, lost and confused.

Sayaka then noticed that something else besides groceries had fallen—a sketchpad of sorts. It was open, and it had a drawing of a city. Though not masterfully drawn and only half-done, it had a certain kindness to it. The lines were soft, evocative of warmth that glowed on the paper whenever you looked. At first glance, it may have looked flat and dead, but there was an inherent honesty in whatever was drawn. According to this, style and elegance were only unnecessary hubris. It was honesty that was going to save the world, save it from the wretchedness of being human and let everybody finally understand that they could all completely love each other if only they were willing to say the truth.

In other words, it was a nice drawing. And Sayaka liked nice drawings.

"Hey, did you make this?" she asked, holding the pad with both hands.

"Um… Yes," the girl answered.

"They're awesome." Sayaka flipped the pages, and was delighted to see even more sketches. Most of them were of simple landscapes and buildings, but there were some people too. They were all drawn with the same clean, soft penciling, and some were even colored lightly.

 _So these are what good drawings look like,_ she told herself.

"Haven't you… seen drawings before?" the girl asked Sayaka.

"Nope, never. This is my first time. Did you study art or something?"

The girl glanced away, a little embarrassed. "Um, not really…"

"Come on!" Sayaka looked at her and smiled. The girl didn't look much, but the fact that a person like her could have so much talent amazed Sayaka even more. "I bet you took classes or something; this stuff's nice enough to look professional."

"That's a little too much… I was self-taught."

"And even better!" she exclaimed. Sayaka had a tendency to get excited over new things. "What's your name?"

"Um…" The girl couldn't look her in the eye for some reason.

Why was that?

"Strange, I haven't met anybody named 'Um' before," Sayaka teased, before thinking of something smart. "Wait, I think I know what your real name is."

She leaned forward expectantly. "You do?"

"You're 'Alice', right? That girl from Wonderland? Or went to Wonderland, rather." Kyoko always told Sayaka fairy tales her father used to tell her at bedtime. Thanks to her, the blunette knew all of these stories by heart. For a moment, she wondered what Kyoko's dad was like, and wished that one day she would get to meet the guy. "It's funny because Alice called herself Um when she had to say her name to the Queen of Hearts…"

'Um' was completely lost on Sayaka's joke.

"You know, that sounded funnier in my head…" She dropped her shoulders, making a dejected sigh. "I'm so corny. Oh well. You can't win them all, I guess. Anyway, my name's Sayaka Miki. What's yours?"

It seemed as if the girl gasped. "Sayaka…"

"Yup, that's my name. Don't tell me the jokes though; I've heard them all." Sayaka then wondered if she really did hear any jokes about her name.

For a few moments, the girl stared at her, again a little confused. As if Sayaka being named Sayaka and not another name was part of some awful truth. The girl looked like she was expecting the blunette to say something, _anything_. But what? She was acting like one of those anime characters who would stare hard at you, hold both your shoulders and say, _'Don't you remember, Sayaka? I'm from the future!'_ or something like that.

 _Don't tell me she thinks acting like that is cool_ , Sayaka thought. It was so _moe_ that it was going to make her sick.

"My name is… Madoka," she said after a few tense minutes. "Madoka Kaname."

"Madoka…" She thought about it for a while. "Well, that's a nice name." She held a hand out. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Madoka hesitated, but accepted it in the end. "It's… nice to meet you too."

"This morning, I've met an artist who randomly drops her groceries on the floor," Sayaka said. "Not every day that kind of stuff happens."

"I was surprised. I just thought that you were… somebody I knew."

"Then that somebody must be quite beautiful then if you thought I was her." She eventually found that drawing again within the sketchpad. "This city… where is it?"

Madoka told her it was Mitakihara. Instantly, the name struck a chord in her mind.

"Hey, I live there. Funny, I didn't know that it could look like this. It rains there a lot you see, so it's kinda rare to see it this sunny."

"Yeah, it does. Doesn't it? Especially in July."

"Yeah, totally in July. You can't say rain in Mitakihara without thinking of July—It's as if all the floodgates above Japan opened on July and somebody said, 'Well, where are we gonna drop all of this water on? Mitakihara, of course!' The heavens are practically _conspiring_ against us at that city."

Madoka chuckled. Finally, somebody got one of Sayaka's jokes.

"You live there too, I take it?" She asked.

"Yes," Madoka simply said.

"Then how come we haven't met each other before?"

"We... I travel a lot."

"Really now? That's awesome. What, roadtrip? Planes? Boats?"

"Trains, mostly."

"We travel a lot by train too." Kyoko told Sayaka once that they should always take trains between cities because a cramped train car always gave the opportunity to lift an easy wallet, or a cellphone to pawn off. _Riiight…_ "It would have been pretty awesome if we somehow got on the same train together."

Madoka's pink hair obscured her face as she spoke. "…I don't know."

"Hey, that would have been awesome. You'd be drawing the view, and my friend would probably ask you to draw a portrait of her and pay you; it'd be a nice business to live off of, you know?" Kyoko might steal the money she would pay her with from someone else, though.

Madoka wasn't talking anymore.

Sayaka remembered that there was a _Denny's_ somewhere near the hotel she was staying at with Kyoko. The blunette would have loved to find out more about Madoka's drawings. "Hey, are you busy today? Why don't we go out for lunch or something? I'll introduce you to a friend of mine; Kyoko. She'll be pretty stoked when she finds out that you draw a lot." Well, Kyoko wouldn't really be all that thrilled about a bunch of drawings, but she'll probably like the idea of having another friend not named Sayaka, right?

But Madoka started sobbing for some reason. Then the sobs became full-blown wails, and Sayaka found herself suddenly faced with a crying wreck of a teenage girl in a convenience store filled with salarymen and highschoolers eating breakfast.

If she had any memory of calming a girl down, let it come to her mind that very second. "Ah… Wh-Why are you crying, Madoka?" Alas, still nothing!

But she wouldn't explain any of it, and it seemed that Sayaka's insistence at finding out made her crying worse. No matter what she did made her calm down. Amidst the stares they got from the other shoppers, Sayaka thought of bringing Madoka outside.

She was going to hold the pinkette's shoulder. "Hey Madoka, why don't we—"

God knows how it got there, but a pistol was suddenly jammed between Sayaka's eyes. Her vision followed the chrome barrel, then the arm, up to the face of that weird girl who was staring at her in the bathroom earlier.

"What the hell?" the blunette muttered.

She let go of the sketchpad, and it clattered on the floor, drawings, pencils and all. On the charging kiosk, Sayaka's phone started ringing.

"Sayaka Miki, why are you alive?" the girl asked coldly.

Behind her shoulder, Madoka's crying had given way to a gasp in shock. "Ho-Homura!"

"Wait. Homura…?" Sayaka's chin dropped. "You're Homura Akemi?!"

"Answer my question, Sayaka Miki; why are you alive?"

"What kind of question is _that_? I'm alive because I am!"

Sayaka then felt her own pockets for her Soul Gem, but it was not there. Where did it go?!

"Looking for this?"

In Homura's left hand something glowed. A deep blue gem that had cracks here and there, as if somebody took a tube of superglue to it and stuck it together in a violent frenzy. But it was Sayaka's Gem, nonetheless.

How did she get it? Kyoko was right; she was super-fast.

"How did you come back?" Akemi kept asking. She tried to make her voice calm, but it was obvious that she was nervous.

Why?

Wait, did she know something about Sayaka's past?

"If you're not going to answer, then I'll kill you."

Within a second, the Soul Gem was between the blunette's eyes on the pistol's business end.

"Homura, stop!" Madoka cried. "Don't hurt her!"

But before Sayaka heard anything else, a shot rang in the air. Suddenly, her head felt heavy, and she could hear something falling. After a few moments, she realized that it was her.

When she finally hit the floor, red liquid started to trail off to the side. Something clinked, and then black.


	2. Part II

When shots were fired, people screamed as they ran for their lives out of the _Lawson's_. The neighborhood was instantly thrown into chaos as the locals on the scene started blabbing about some girl randomly shooting another girl in the face. Earlier, there was already a shootout at a nearby _Denny's_ , then an explosion that set the restaurant ablaze, a fire that the local Fire Fighter bureau could not handle with so little manpower. Local Police struggled to respond to the various reports and calls on their hotlines, having to wait for more men to report on duty so early in the morning.

The local government had already deployed vans with speakers announcing that everything was fine and that nobody should be troubled by the ongoing chaos. But despite their best efforts, rumors had spread that a terrorist attack was occurring, that the leftists had suddenly come out of the woodwork and unleashed their hidden arsenal of explosives on the innocent town of Asunaro. There was word that the prefectural SATs would be deployed, while local conspiracy theorists and their ilk infested local online message boards with talk about JSDF units en route to the city this very minute.

It was during this slow development of chaos that Homura took advantage of the crowds of worried passerby on the streets to hide herself and Madoka from view. She was worried that wherever Sayaka Miki came from, there were more like her coming after them. On top of that, the Pleiades Saints were definitely out for blood. But how was Sayaka alive in the first place? She tried to think of an explanation, _any_ kind of explanation. One of Kyubey's tricks? One of the side-effects of killing Walpurgisnacht? One of the anomalies that had happened so far simply because Madoka was still alive after May 1?

It didn't matter what kind of answer Homura had come up with. A Witch coming back to life _made no sense_.

Homura sighed. It was not the time to tire herself with unnecessary thoughts. Not when they were _this_ close to getting out of Asunaro. She had to get Madoka out of here no matter what. But why was she getting so mad about it?

A thick, burning feeling was inside her chest. No matter how much thinking she did, she could not make it go away. She felt like she was losing something at a giant's pace, and once lost it would never come back.

But what?

While they were running down the streets, the feeling bothered her so greatly that she beckoned Madoka to stop and rest in an alley a few blocks from the station. Her body was shaking, and she felt terribly cold. Three more Grief Seeds were used, but they barely shined the Gem's top. Homura panicked. Madoka asked what was going on, but the time-stopper tried to act as casual as possible. She didn't want to needlessly alarm her.

Madoka inched close to her, trying to see what was happening with the Gem. "Homura, are you alright?"

She quickly hid it within her hands, trying to hide the truth from her friend.

"Homura, what's happening?"

"I'm… I'm fine."

"No, you're not," she objected, before reaching out to hold Homura's hand. "Let me see what's happening with your Gem—"

"Why did you stop me earlier?"

Madoka did not catch what she said. "I'm sorry?"

"She could have killed you, you know." Homura looked up, her eyes full of worry. "Why didn't you call for me?"

Once Madoka realized what she was getting at, the pinkette glanced away, ashamed.

What was she saying? Homura only said that to deflect Madoka's interest from her Gem, but somehow… she was being overtaken by her own emotions. "Why didn't you call for me? Don't you know how worried I was when I saw you with her?"

"Homura, let's just go; the train will leave at eight…"

"Answer my question, Madoka."

Madoka made a start and walked away. "We might lose our seats—"

Very quickly, Homura gripped her hand and pulled her back. "Madoka! Aren't I enough for you?"

She looked back at her, her mouth stopped mid-sequence in a frightened gasp.

Homura's eyes burned with the anger that had stewed within her since they had left the store. All sorts of vile, murderous thoughts went through her head. She would look for Sayaka Miki, crush her Soul Gem, and throw her lifeless husk of a body into a river, never to be seen or heard from again. She would show all of this to Madoka, screaming _'Am I okay for you now? Am I? AM I?!'_ She had gone through hell just to make sure Madoka was safe, even killing Walpurgisnacht and all the magical girls who got in their way. And this was how she was going to repay her? To run away with a stupid friend who was supposed to be dead?

Homura was protecting Madoka; Madoka's life depended on her. Madoka belonged to nobody else but HER!

" _Homura, you're… you're hurting me!"_

Homura came back to her senses, and she found herself crushing Madoka's hand with her grip. With a shudder, she let go, but the damage was already done—there were tears in her friend's eyes as she nursed her right hand. Seeing her face like that, Homura felt that the ground had given way somehow. Her clothes became ten degrees hotter, she felt herself become smaller. At that moment, she wished that somebody would just wipe her off the face of the earth right then and there.

"I'm sorry Madoka, I didn't mean to…"

Homura tried to hold her again, but this time Madoka flinched. The way she did only made the time-stopper feel worse.

For a few moments, silence was the only thing between them.

"…Let's just go, Homura," the pinkette said, before walking out into the street.

She nodded. "Um… right."

While Madoka led the way towards Asunaro Central Station, Homura took her Soul Gem out of her pocket. It was already dimmer a few notches than it was half an hour ago. She had to stop thinking of any negative thoughts, think of nothing but getting Madoka out of the city. For good measure, the time-stopper touched a Grief Seed to it and had the darkness sucked out.

But she hadn't even blinked when it became dim again.

This was it. She had no time left.

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

" _Hey Sayaka! God damn it… Hey! Move your lazy ass already!"_

She could barely open her eyes, but she saw somebody kneeling above her, screaming her name. Who was this? She listened to the tune of the voice and recognized it as Kyoko. Funny. She was just dreaming of that time when she first woke up. It was also like this. Kyoko was kneeling next to her, shouting her name. But it was raining at that time, and it was really cold. Smelled a lot like wet dirt. Now though, why did it feel so hot all of the sudden? Something was burning in the air, an unholy mishmash of rubber tires and overly-cooked food.

Kyoko grinned at her. "A nap. How peaceful."

The swordswoman was still a little out-of-sync with reality. "I was having a nice dream."

"I kept calling your phone but nobody answered, so I went around looking for you. When I saw people running and screaming out of a convenience store, well…" And then Kyoko's eyes rolled to the side.

Sayaka gave her this lowbrow stare while propping herself up with her arms. "Okay, now that was just cruel—AAAggh!"

Her hand slipped for some reason, and she would have fallen back to the floor if Kyoko hadn't caught her. Sayaka looked at her hand, and it was cold and red. She looked back at the floor, and the blunette could not help but shudder when she saw a large splatter of blood where her head was supposed to be.

Her eyes widened. "Are you serious…?"

"Whoever shot your brains out must have had it in you," Kyoko commented, before giving Sayaka her Soul Gem. "This was right where I found you. Now let's get out of here before we both get burned."

"Burned? Why?"

"Haven't you noticed that the place is on fire?"

Sayaka looked to her side, and true enough flames viciously devoured the front door and the adjacent shelves, slowly inching its way towards them through the aisles.

While Kyoko had already gone through the staff entrance at the back, Sayaka saw Madoka's sketchpad. She must have forgotten it while escaping with Akemi. The blunette flipped through a few pages, stopping when she found something pretty peculiar.

Kyoko was busy when Sayaka came into the staff office. On a desk, she was filling two backpacks with packages of food.

The blunette reacted with even brows. "Really now, Kyoko?"

"It's a burning convenience store; what else am I supposed to do?" She paused, conflicted between bringing either a pack of _Warabimochi_ or the Omurice bento. After a few moments, it didn't matter anymore; she shrugged her arms and packed both. "Besides, I told you I'd get us food."

"Why is it on fire, then?"

"I burned it."

"You what?"

"Anyway, I've just gotten word on Akemi. You might want to hear about it."

Sayaka decided to drop the notion that her best friend may be a professional arsonist for the sake of her own mental health. The blunette touched the back of her head, wondering if the exit wound was still there or something. "I think I've heard of her enough."

"That Soul Gem of hers, for some reason it never gets really clean," according to Kyoko. "She'll have to keep using Grief Seeds constantly or else she'll Witch-Out. They'll end up wasted before long. That's why that magical girl group that's chasing her is in a real mess. They want to catch her, but all they get back are corpses."

"They're planning to run away by train," Sayaka said. "I have a feeling they're gonna go to Mitakihara."

The redhead stared at her dubiously. "And how come?"

Sayaka threw the sketchpad on the table, and a JR stored value card slipped out of the page, the half-finished picture of Mitakihara.

"I met Akemi myself," she said.

"Well crap, so that's why they kept talking about..." Kyoko's eyes widened in realization, and she quickly zipped the bag and slung it on her back, tossing the second one to Sayaka along with a pair of keys. "Grab these and get outta here; quick!"

She directed Sayaka to the staff entrance. And when she got out, the redhead picked up the sketchpad and started flipping through the pages...

The street was empty, save for the thick black smoke coming from the convenience store and the ring of sirens far away in the air. A shining red Ford Mustang stood proudly near the alley, its engine purring. Sayaka was alarmed and looked around for anybody who must have been the driver, until Kyoko came along, shouting, "Sayaka, the trunk!"

She did as she was told, and when she turned the lock, she saw two girls tied up inside: one with poofed white hair and another blue-haired girl with glasses. They looked beat up real bad. Both of them tried to shout at her for help, but unfortunately they were gagged with what seemed to be…

Soul Gems?

Were these magical girls?

Sayaka turned to her companion. "Uh, Kyoko…"

"Just caught myself two Pleiades, is all; they'll be useful," she said, hiding something behind her back. But Sayaka was too distracted to notice, and Kyoko had her pack the bag she had into the trunk too.

The blunette stared at the two, before thinking that she shouldn't get herself further involved with them. She carefully put the food bags along with the two girls, afraid that she might end up hurting them somehow.

"Those two say that their buddies are already waiting at the station, so hurry up Sayaka; get in the car."

"Got it!"

As Sayaka got into the Mustang, Kyoko looked at the sketchpad in her hands. She flipped a few pages, saw the drawings. They were pretty nice. And then there was this one showing Sayaka with that dippy pinkette and that green-haired bitch.

The two who made Sayaka cry.

Kyoko grimaced, and chucked the whole sketchpad into the windows of the burning _Lawson's_ before getting into the car.

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

"Madoka, you get in first," Homura told her, pushing her lone card into the turnstile to let Madoka pass.

"But Homura, I don't really know how it got lost!" She really didn't; Madoka tried looking in her bag, but nothing. When they ran from the convenience store, though… Could she have left it there? "I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to lose it—"

"It doesn't matter, Madoka. You'll just have to go on the train first," Homura said. "Don't worry; I'll just buy my own ticket and catch up."

She wanted to leave for Mitakihara, but she didn't want to leave Homura. "But how—"

"It seems that you two are having some sort of commotion here," mused a nice lady conductor, who approached them in a blue JR uniform and a matching hat. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Um, my friend," Madoka started, nervous. She was going to lie to an adult, but it was for Homura's sake, right? "She… she lost her Value Card for the train. She has to meet her parents in Mitakihara, you see. Her father…" She was supposed to say 'died' until Homura shot her a glare. "…got sick."

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about that…" The conductor lady said.

Homura noticed something oddly familiar about this 'conductor'. The lady took off her hat, revealing short white hair and a single monocle. And come to think of it, why on Earth would a train conductor have a riding crop…?

Instantly, she realized who it was.

Electric sparks came out the crop's tip. "Too bad your friend killed _my_ friends, though!"

Homura turned to Madoka, fear streaked across her face. "RUN!"

Immediately, Madoka ran for the station platform. While the pinkette was escaping, Homura tried to grab hold of her own Soul Gem, but the woman got a hold of her neck first.

"This is for Kazumi, you bitch!"

The lady held her crop to Homura's face, the sparks intensifying with cries of the woman's wrath, searing Homura's veins. Her teeth felt like they were being forcedly pushed out of her gums. Air slowly being cut off as volts of pure electricity sent her nerves burning, she tried to think of a solution, _any_ solution, until she sensed it—

Right. Time to put the Grief Seeds to real work.

She exerted great will to resist the electrocution, and managed to slip out her Soul Gem. Before the woman could even sense what was going on, Homura turned her shield counter-clockwise. Suddenly, her surroundings became monochrome, where every object, person, even the small pieces of trash in the air stopped.

But the woman was still on her, still strangling with the pure intent to kill.

"I know all of your tricks, Akemi!" she shouted, reveling in the sweet expression of surprise mixed with horror on her adversary's face. "We know that you can stop time with your powers, but they're useless once we get a hold of you!"

While she was shouting that though, Saki found herself at the very far end of the turnstiles, her hands tucked behind her back, strangling no murderers whatsoever. She even had her hat on.

She held her breath. "What in the world…?"

Wait. Wasn't she here while waiting for Akemi to come? Saki looked around herself, thinking where her enemy could have gone. Was this another one of her powers? But how…?

Before any thoughts could fully consummate, somebody called her attention: at the middle of the platform stood Akemi, armed with what seemed to be an assault rifle of sorts, ready to fire…

But in full range of Saki's powers, she was a sitting duck.

Taking the initiative of a first strike, Saki shot her with a bolt of lightning, and good enough somehow she managed to hit her! Akemi's body thrashed and shook as the electricity slowly burned her insides, making her veins pop out and turn purple, until she became a withered, lifeless husk on the station floor, completely fried.

Saki couldn't believe herself; she killed her as easily as _that_?

She went near Akemi, and a pulse reading confirmed it as true enough. She was dead. Too bad they wouldn't be able to capture her Soul Gem. Saki looked around if there was anybody else here, but only crowds running away from the platform in confusion. She'll just tell the others that she killed Kazumi's murderer by accident.

But being skeptical, Saki kicked the corpse over, just to make sure that she could see Akemi's face.

A blank stare remained on her final moments. Such a fitting look, Saki thought. Death was too good for this girl, though. Saki would have loved to see her cry a little more after a few shocks, maybe even after a lobotomy. It would have been nice, but that was life; it didn't give you everything you wanted. This should be enough.

But what was this? Under Akemi's hands, her Soul Gem remained. Saki took it up. A little purple orb, the light inside wrapped in swirls of darkness. How could this be? She's already used most of her magic, and she was sure she hit Akemi! So why was the Gem still here?

Saki pinched her brows. Shouldn't it be _gone_?

Suddenly, the Soul Gem disappeared in her hand, and something else started happening to Akemi. The blood on her elbows and arms were seeping back into their wounds, then closing up in almost miraculous speed. In a sudden act like raising the dead, her body floated, stood up, a puppet being pulled back into life. It went backwards, as if a movie was being rewinded onscreen, until it stood in the middle of the platform, the gleam of her eyes returning, very much alive.

Saki took a few moments to digest what she saw, and it cost her dearly: before she realized it, a cluster of claymore mines had surrounded her. Encircled by their glowing red beacons, she could only think of a foremost action before they detonated.

Homura watched her enemy explode in a violent plume of fire and smoke, and considered herself lucky that her magic kicked in when it did. But that wasn't going to be the killing blow. Gripping the black steel finish of the _G36_ Assault Rifle in her hands, she took aim at where her adversary was with its iron sight. The smoke eventually cleared, and within the fading ash, only debris and chunks of claymore balls remained.

The time-stopper was about to turn behind to see if her enemy had escaped, when suddenly a fist crashed against Homura's cheek, sending her flying across the platform into a wall. The crash broke a few bones, and she tasted blood in her mouth. Blinding pain spread across her face, and her mouth wouldn't stop chattering. She tried to resist, but it seemed that her body wouldn't move. Arms, legs, neck, everything refused to work.

Homura's enemy walked towards her, electricity coursing through her hands into two bullwhips. She noticed that Saki's hair had grown out to her waist now.

"That's lightning paralyzing your face. The rest of it is busy killing your body's nerve endings, preventing your brain from sending commands to your body parts. In due time, it'll destroy your nerves completely, and your body will be useless." A smile climbed up on the side of Saki's cheeks. "You can rewind your body back into its original state, sure, but I get the feeling that you have to reach for that shield of yours first before you can do anything, right?"

Bottom line, Homura was caught.

"I'll take back what I said, Akemi. It seems that I don't know all of your tricks," she said, a whip trained on her enemy's head while keeping her distance. "Not only can you stop time, but you can also rewind it, and make it go fast-forward as well. You've grown freakishly powerful since beating Walpurgisnacht… Interesting. It completely breaks the laws of physics. Tell me, what _are_ you now, exactly, Akemi? Are you even _human?_ "

Homura would have loved to answer her question, but her mouth would still not stop chattering.

"You know what? Don't answer. You don't have the right to do that," Saki said, trying to contain her emotions. But her voice was shaking; she was about to go off the edge herself. "Are you happy now, Akemi? You must be. You're really powerful now, you know? Turning all those girls into Witches… using their Grief Seeds… I wonder what it must've felt. What did it feel like to watch them suffer as you killed them all?"

What was she trying to say?

The woman veered her face closely to Homura's, her stare sober, enigmatic. "Do you even feel at all, Akemi? If you're human, you should feel _something_ , I guess. But what if you're not actually human…?" She paused, troubled with herself, before dropping her arms with a sigh. "You know what, never mind. I wasn't cut out for monologues. I'll just get straight to the point."

She gave Homura a kick to the face, and another to the gut. And another, and another, and another, and another…

"You killed her! You goddamned murderer! She never did anything to you, but you killed her!"

Homura took each blow with a stiff upper lip.

"You're not human! YOU'RE NOT HUMAN AT ALL!"

She failed to fight back not only because the electricity paralyzed her completely, but because some small part of Homura thought that she deserved all of this somehow.

"Die," Saki cried. "Die! DIE!"

A hand grabbed her by the shoulder. "SAKI!"

The woman flinched, and glanced over her shoulder. She saw a girl with orange hair looking concerned, frightened even.

"Saki… are you okay?" Kaoru asked.

Kaoru had an arm wrapped around somebody's neck, the pink-haired girl that was travelling with Akemi.

Saki looked down on the ground. Her boots, stained with blood, led up to Akemi's face, now a mess of cuts and bruises. Sparks were still travelling here and there, searing whatever wounds they crossed paths with. It was pitiful.

What was Saki doing? Wasn't she supposed to be capturing Akemi's Soul Gem?

"…Y-Yeah, I'm… I'm fine." Saki nodded. "I'm fine."

Madoka looked on at the scene, helpless to do nothing but attempt escape in vain, helpless at saving anybody.

"Lucky I found her in the crowd." Kaoru shifted her grip on the pinkette to her right arm, showing her to Saki before looking at her. "Thought I wouldn't notice you going out the back, didn't you?"

"Let me go!" she cried, trying to pull herself from the girl's grip, but it didn't budge. It was as if Madoka was tied to a steel post.

The shocks were slowly wearing off Homura's face, and now she felt numb. She could move her mouth to speak, but only with difficulty. "Don't… hurt her."

Kaoru heard this, and she set her eyes upon Akemi. Her face darkened. Obviously, she did not like the time-stopper either. "We won't. Unlike you, we don't hurt the innocent," she said.

"And now, Homura Akemi, we're going to do something about this Gem of yours..." Saki kneeled directly in front of her, and put a hand on top of the purple diamond on Homura's hand.

"Stop it!" Madoka cried, struggling with all her strength to escape her captor's grasp. "What are you going to do to her?!"

"Kaoru," Saki commanded.

She put a hand over Madoka's mouth after a brief tussle. "Now, keep quiet and don't make me hurt you…"

"Madoka…" Homura cried, "Let… Let go of her!"

The lens on Saki's monocle became opaque in the light, while her other eye showed a shade of sinister malevolence. "Right after we take what we came here for."

As her hand finally made contact with Homura's diamond, Saki's palm glowed. The time-stopper could only let a thin gasp escape as she watched her pull the power source out of her hand, morphing it back into Gem form.

Homura felt her body weakening at a devastating rate. Her vision started to become spotty, and her senses became number as seconds passed. She fought it desperately, but the Gem removal drained every part of her being. She could only stand against it for so long…

 _Was this it?_ she asked herself. Did she fail protecting Madoka for the last time?

"No…" Homura managed, a single tear flowing down the side of her cheek.

Saki noticed this, but she did not heed the message it brought. This girl, Akemi, did not deserve any mercy. She should even consider herself lucky. If only Kaoru hadn't shown up…

" _Tocco del mare,"_ Saki whispered.

But as the Soul Gem was about to be pulled out, Kaoru pulled her away from Homura. A single sword flew across Saki's field of vision, barely missing her by centimeters. When Saki looked at that direction, amidst the chaotic torrent of people, a lone figure in blue wearing a cape stood, cutlasses akimbo.

She raised her brow. Who was that? Another enemy?

Before she could even think of a conclusion, the figure disappeared in a flash, and it was suddenly in front of Saki, about to strike her down with a sword. She dodged, but her assailant was faster than she had first thought—that very split-second the cutlasses made three precise strikes, the first against her head, the second breaking her ribs, and finally the third bending her right wrist.

Seeing her friend being attacked, Kaoru was ready to intervene when before her, a red figure came onto the scene—a magical girl with a spear. On her shoulders, she carried what seemed to be two girls.

Immediately, Kaoru recognized them as Mirai and Umika.

But before she could even process the thought of how they got captured in her mind, the red magical girl threw both of them at her. "Here, catch!"

The girls crashed onto Kaoru, flooring her.

In the meanwhile, Saki had fallen as well, severely damaged by that sudden strike. No blood, though. A sword's dull edge was used against her. When she came back to her senses, she realized that her blue attacker was gone, along with Akemi and that pink-haired girl she was with. The only ones there were Kaoru, Mirai, and Umika, all struggling with the damage done to them as well.

"SAKI!" Mirai cried as she went up to her boss at the edge of tears. "Are you okay?! We're you hurt?"

"Guys, stand up; we have to get Akemi!" Saki ordered, taking Mirai aside as she got on her feet. "Kaoru, where did they go?"

The girl rubbed the back of her orange hair in pain, another hand pointing forward. "I think she went that way…"

"Then what are you all sitting around for? GET HER!"

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

"Get the car; I'll go after them!" Sayaka shouted.

"Got it!" Kyoko stopped and threw herself into the crowd, going out of the station.

Sayaka was chasing Akemi and Madoka, the three throwing themselves into the throng of panic and confusion wrought by the people escaping the platforms, where no one stopped to question the presence of costumed little girls at a time like this. Eventually, Sayaka managed to come out of the crowd and catch up with Homura near a train, but was suddenly faced with a hail of bullets, making her hide behind a stone column for cover.

"Sayaka Miki," she said loud enough for her enemy to hear. "If you come near us, I'll kill you!"

At this time, Sayaka was confused with everything. It seemed that Akemi and Madoka knew something about her past, maybe even closely tied into it somehow, and they must have answers to the questions Sayaka had. But she had to take the Grief Seeds from them. If she did that though, then wouldn't that mean letting Akemi Witch-Out? Should she even go after them at all?

"Just leave us alone!" she heard her target yell.

Sayaka hugged the wall, edging her face to the column's end. The bullets chipping it off made her flinch. "I can't do that, Akemi! I have something to finish with you first. There are things I want answered!"

"I said, LEAVE US ALONE!"

A grenade rolled next to Sayaka's foot.

The swordswoman pulled out two cutlasses from inside her cape. "Have it your way, then."

Homura braced Madoka as the column exploded in fire and debris. Smoke filled the area. Expecting that a grenade wouldn't be enough for Miki, she beckoned Madoka to hide, and ventured forward with an M9 Beretta and trench knife in tow.

The smoke enveloped her. Taking slow, tactical steps, Homura listened in to the sounds. No footsteps, no clanks, not even breathing. Maybe Sayaka Miki _was_ dead…

But a blinding flash of blue light came right out of nowhere, and Homura could only fire a few rounds that the silhouette skillfully dodged. Only a foot separating them, Sayaka cut away at the time-stopper with perfect timing and accuracy.

Homura tried to use her shield to control the battle's pace, but with subsequent uses against the Pleiades, the weapon was already at its limits. Her vision started fading again. Time was running out.

Madoka watched the battle helplessly from cover, sparks flying between Sayaka's cutlasses and Homura's pistols. She rummaged in the messenger bag for more Grief Seeds, but there were only five left—not enough to even turn Homura's Soul Gem gray. But there was something else: the Revolver. Quickly she took aim, pulling back the hammer with a finger steady on the trigger.

But could she really shoot Sayaka? What if she ended up hitting Homura instead?

The gun started shaking in Madoka's hand. She couldn't think of bringing it to bear against any of them.

The battle between Sayaka and Homura was tense. With every swipe the swordswoman had, the gunslinger took out pistols and machineguns to answer them. Near-hits to Sayaka's face and air-slices at the edge of Homura's ears were common. It seemed that every time the blunette came in for a slash, an M9 Beretta would shoot the sword off, but when said M9 would take aim, a new cutlass struck it off the user's hands. It was quickly becoming a stalemate between them, the weapons they could pull out against the other seemingly inexhaustible. But one thing was quickly becoming apparent: while Sayaka's Soul Gem was somewhat glowing despite its ruined condition, Homura's Soul Gem darkened at a very disturbing rate. It was obvious that she would not be able to hold out in the fight for long.

At a crucial moment, Sayaka struck the time-stopper with both cutlasses. Homura blocked with two Desert Eagles in a cross, both pistols shaking as she struggled to hold the swords away, inches from her face. When they reached this point, Sayaka's search for answers and Homura's mission of defense became irrelevant. Their emotions took the best of them; both of their desires to snuff the life out of the other had become too great, though—their strengths cancelled each other out. Nobody could successfully deliver the killing blow.

But both of them felt the ground tremble. At first they ignored it, but soon the shaking became too profound. Not far away from where they were, a giant teddy bear sprinted towards them, the ground cracking with each step.

In a burst of strength, Homura pushed Sayaka away. Her opponent disarmed, the time-stopper used this opportunity to smash her shield into the blunette's face. She then pulled out a rocket launcher, and the missile hit the giant teddy on its right leg. The bear tripped, slipping a few meters, and crashed into one of the platform's support beams, turning it into a clump of dust and rubble. From the smoke emerged four silhouettes: The Pleiades Saints.

Sayaka got stunned for a few seconds, but this was enough to let her see a train leaving the station. Akemi had used her powers to bring it to life. Quickly, she got on her feet, and jumped down onto the train tracks with the intention of catching up to it.

The Pleiades Saints were not about to let her run off too, however. They came up the platform and jumped down onto the tracks, all of their weapons primed towards Sayaka.

"I don't know who you are," said Saki, adjusting her monocle to see better. "But you should better explain why you're interfering with us."

In the distance behind them, a horn sounded off. The other Pleiades tried to listen in to know what it was. The distant purr of an engine became louder and more tangible, the horn itself was beginning to sound acute.

But Saki ignored this. She was not about to let anybody get in the way of capturing Akemi, more so right now when they were so close. But behind her, Kaoru was saying something. When she turned around to know what it was all about, a Ford Mustang was rushing down the tracks towards her at 102 kilometers per hour. Kaoru and the others pulled her out of the way, and the red Mustang sped past them.

The car stopped in front of Sayaka, the smell of burnt rubber thick in the air.

"Get on!" Kyoko yelled.

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

Lying on Madoka's knees, Homura was breathing heavily, her chest moving in erratic, spasms. Her face was paler than before, and her eyes started to show signs of black waves violently clashing within her blue pupils. Her Soul Gem, now almost completely blackened, showed signs of cracking. All five of the remaining Grief Seeds laid spent on the floor next to her, having done nothing to alleviate her condition. She writhed in agony, screaming as the cracking slowly overtook her Gem.

Helpless. This was what Madoka could have described her feelings at that moment. She was completely helpless in saving Homura. Here she was, suffering for Madoka's sake, but Madoka herself could do nothing to get rid of that suffering at all.

But what could she do? They were running away to Mitakihara, and that was what Madoka wanted, right? But now, there was nothing saving her best friend anymore, and it seemed that the whole world was hunting them down. Even Sayaka.

This was the hardest for Madoka to accept. She had not just lost one friend, but two.

She couldn't do anything but let the tears flow out. These useless, pathetic tears that fell onto her friend.

"Homura!" she cried. "I'll… I'll save you! I swear I will! I'll get the Grief Seeds you need; I'll even make a contract and fight all of those other girls to get them for you; just don't die!"

"Don't," was all Homura said, Madoka's tears falling down her own cheeks. "Don't. Not for my sake, no. There… there was no hope for me from the start. All I ever wanted was to get you out of here. Please, save yourself. Get to Mitakihara…"

She then screamed in agony, and Madoka held her closer in alarm.

"Homura!"

The time-stopper forced herself to bear the pain so she could open her mouth. "I… I want you to do me a favor."

"Yes?"

Homrua pointed to the revolver right next to her. The pinkette was shocked.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I won't do it!"

"Madoka, I want you to remember me as me." She was now struggling with every breath. "Another you… told me that there were… so many awful and horrible things in this world. But there are many things… worth protecting too. I don't want to turn into a Witch. I don't want to destroy this world. Not after all I've done to save you…"

"HOMURA!"

Slowly, she lifted up her hand, her Soul Gem appearing in the shape of an egg. As it did, the job set before Madoka became more and more evident until its sheer clarity horrified her. She had to do this. She had to or else Homura will turn into a Witch. But why? Why did she have to do this? Why did fate let Homura come to this kind of end? It was too unfair!

But… it had to be done. There was no other alternative.

Madoka raised the revolver up to Homura's hand, directly in front of the Soul Gem. Her hands still shook, and the sight wouldn't align. The tears still fell from her eyes.

"You know, Madoka… I want to tell you something," she said. "But even… even at this moment, I can't say it."

Then, a smile awkwardly, clumsily came up Homura's lips.

Even so, it was the most sincere smile Madoka saw her make.

"To think," she continued, "of all the things I should be feeling right now, it's embarrassment."

And without warning, Homura screamed again. The cracks on her Soul Gem had spread all over its surface, and now the black corruption was starting to overtake it. Madoka was wrought with all sorts of emotions: one part of her felt that she should pull the trigger, the other saying that she should not kill her best friend. But how she suffered in front of her convinced Madoka that it had to be done. No matter what happened, her friend's wish will not be in vain.

But it would be the most painful burden she would carry for the rest of her life.

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

When the car finally managed to catch up with the train's front cab, Sayaka held onto a cutlass she had stabbed onto the Mustang's roof. She panned her vision into the train's windows, looking for them. Almost convinced it was empty, she was about to think that the train may have been a decoy when she saw someone sitting on a chair.

It was Madoka holding Akemi in her arms. A gun on her left hand, she stroked her friend's head like a mother and her child. Her face belonged to one who had lost everything in the world, one who had to destroy that very thing firsthand.

Somehow, the swordswoman caught her attention.

The pinkette stared at her, but with eyes that did not just lose everything, but somehow gained something else in return.

Sayaka saw her move her lips, but she did not hear a single word that Madoka said.

Instead, the swordswoman heard whistling.

Sayaka looked forward, and a volley of missiles flew towards the train, exploding on impact. She saw a split-frame of how the flames engulfed both of it's passengers, before the whole frontal cab burst.

The Mustang violently veered to the right, dodging debris from the explosion. Kyoko poked her head out of the driver's seat, a look of disbelief on her face as she stared at the smoldering wreckage, then up Sayaka. "The hell was _that_?!"

Ahead of the tracks, before the rails entered the underground tunnel system that interconnected Asunaro and Mitakihara, a single girl stood, looking through a set of magically-conjured binoculars. "It's gone," she said. "Good job, Nico."

Next to her, Nico and her identical clones stood in an organized line, their finger missiles at the ready for another volley. "Ah, okay. But… wouldn't this mean that we won't get her Soul Gem anymore?"

"It doesn't matter now; that girl was about to crack anyway. It would be too late to save her." Satomi then gave the surroundings a quick sweep with her binoculars. "Nico, get ready. Something else is coming."

As her companion and her squad of clones prepared another salvo, she watched a red car stop by the train. There was someone standing on the roof, a girl with a cape who did nothing but stare at the wreckage. Someone else came out of the car, a girl with a long ponytail, and she called out to the girl on top of the car. A few moments passed, but Cape Girl did not budge. Even when Ponytail started pulling the cape, she was as stubborn as hell. Cape Girl eventually went down from the car on her own accord, and she ran with Ponytail away from the rails, jumping over the wire fence, abandoning their car.

But a minute later, Ponytail came back, took out two backpacks from the car's trunk, and ran off again.

Satomi put her binoculars down, a slight look of confusion on her face. "What was that…?"

 **Xxx^.^xxX**

 _To be an effective swordsman, the wielder must be one with his weapon,_ was what she had read when she skimmed that Kendo sword manual. True enough, this should always be the case. A good swordswoman should always be one with her weapon.

Without giving her adversary a chance to realize her intent, the she raised her sword and struck a violent blow to the puppet's head.

" _Men!"_

A flash of a second later, her sword drew back, then smashing itself into the puppet's waist.

" _Dou!"_

And with a simple sleight of hand, she held the blade upwards, bringing it down onto her enemy's wrist in a final strike.

" _Ko-te!"_

Meanwhile, her roomate was tearing open a box of Pocky.

Her straw opponent more or less in tatters, Sayaka restored it again with her Soul Gem and put it away. Beads of sweat on her forehead, she walked up to the window in her room. Sundown in the city of Asunaro. She stared at its urban expanse in silence, neither feeling nor thinking of anything in particular.

A cat was standing in a little alcove next to the windowsill, but god knows how it got on the 7th storey. Upon further inspection, it was Kyubey.

" _It was unfortunate that both Homura Akemi and Madoka Kaname met an untimely end,"_ it said.

Sayaka ignored him and continued to stare at the Asunaro skyline.

" _I was watching, but it was too late before I could reach out to her,"_ the incubator continued. _"Too bad. It was such a waste of potential energy."_

Something in what it said made Sayaka grit her teeth. In a flash of fury, she took up one of the hotel's slippers and chucked it at Kyubey. Like a cat, it hopped away to somewhere. The Incubator even made a slight cat-like sound when it got hit. The slipper went sidewalk diving.

A moment later, Kyoko came into the room, startled. She was wearing the same Red-Hot Chili Peppers T-Shirt she wore yesterday. Outside the room, _Universally Speaking_ was playing.

"The hell was that?" she asked.

"Nothing, just a stray cat." Sayaka turned to her. "What's cooking?"

"Hah, no more cooking for a while," She shook her head and smiled. "We'll just eat out before we catch the eight o'clock bus later."

"I see."

Sayaka took a deep breath. Part of her wanted Kyoko to say something like, 'Hey, sorry about Madoka whats-her-name…', but Kyoko probably didn't even know who Madoka was that much. Besides, she couldn't expect something like that the redhead. That would've been unfair.

Of course, both of them knew the gravity of what had just happened. Some unspoken rule of the world had just been imprinted into them, the blunette especially. Of course, Sayaka didn't really know who Madoka was that much, but she couldn't help but wonder if there was something she could've done somehow. Probably anybody would've felt the same way.

"You know," the redhead said out of the blue, matching her friend's mood, "It's always like this."

She nodded. "I know."

Kyoko then passed her a box of Pocky, and Sayaka saw fit to take a stick for herself. She continued staring at the city outside her window, thinking of how the sun took so much time going down.

 _Life_ , she wondered. _How senseless it all was._

 _SEE YOU MAGICAL GIRL_

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Alright guys, good thing you got here so far, and I'd like to thank you all for sticking through with reading this fic. Now, if it's alright, lemme ask you guys a favor. I rarely speak out to readers seriously, so I might as well go all the way. (TL;DR warning ahead! Here's a 'thanks for reading!' in advance if you don't want to read it)

You see, keeping up with making quality fanfics (or fanfics with the pretense of so-called 'quality', at least; LOL) is hard. And everybody here is looking for good fanfics, right? Plot Planning, creating Outlines, writing drafts, revision and proofreading all goes into making a fanfic good. With all those processes, keeping up the quality of the stuff churned out is hard for just one person, especially without second opinions and pointers on how to better the technical aspects of the work. A review about how the fic came out in terms of how the plot was constructed, or how good or bad the characters were developed, or how the work's overall theme came through would really go a long way in giving me instructions on how to write better works, which in turn translates into better fics in the future for you guys. I'm not looking for positive reinforcement; that would defeat the overall message of what I'm saying (of course that would be nice, though... but still). All I'm asking for is help in making quality content for you, the reader. All of the fics I've released lately are shorts I made to check out how people react to the 'flavor' of fics I make, and I've got other ideas that I'd like to share with you in the future. Specifically, to those who, by some random act of god, like the kind of fics I make, I'd like to ask for your help, so I can make the kind of fics you like more properly in the months to come.

Anyway, enough rambling for me. Time to get back into academic writing for a while. Still, I already have another fic pending for editing, and it's twice as long as whatever I've written. Help from Beta Readers would be much appreciated (I think my lack of a beta reader is quite obvious at this point). For those interested, please PM so I can tell you the specifics.

Okay, so again guys, thanks a lot for reading. I hope I'll see you all in the Traffic Stats for the next fic too.


End file.
